An Epsom strip club has had its licence renewed despite dividing residents on what it brings to the town.
Stir, in the town centre’s East Street, has run as a sexual entertainment venue since 2011, though operations manager Damon Wellman has been running it as a bar since 2007.

Residents who wrote to the council about the application raised concerns about going into town late at night because of it, while another in support said the bar did not have the “creeps” you would find in other venues.

A licensing sub committee meeting at Epsom and Ewell Borough Council on Thursday (August 24) granted renewal of the venue’s licence, which was due to expire.

Stir is Epsom and Ewell’s only establishment licenced as a sexual entertainment venue.

The sub committee considered six letters of support and four objections to the application, as well as hearing from Mr Wellman in the meeting.

Letters of support included one person who used to live very close to the venue, who said they were being followed home one night by three men having left another nearby pub. The letter said: “It was late and we had to walk past Stir bar so we asked the doormen if they could help and they were brilliant. “They let us stay in the bar for free, offered to call the police if the men stayed outside, which they did not, and then after some time walked us back to our flat. After that we would sometimes just go in there for a drink as it was a really nice bar and never had the creeps that we would encounter in other bars.”

But one objector said she would not go into town late at night because of the club, saying she had “seen the men coming in and out” and felt “unsafe”.

 
Another person who wrote in support said they understood people’s “reservations to this sort of thing”, but added “it’s important that perceptions and prejudice do not take precedent over facts and reality.”

Another letter said the venue “tainted” the town, raising concerns about it being so close to a nursery and to a residential area. They went on to say: “I write to and on behalf of the young women who walk home late at night and ask you to reconsider your renewal and shut the premise down and protect young adults from these dangers.”

While another letter claimed there had been a “significant increase in anti-social behaviour associated with the establishment”, Mr Wellman disputed this in the meeting.

He produced a response to a Freedom of Information request he had submitted to the council regarding complaints, whether noise or otherwise, about the premises which said there had been none in the last five years.

Mr Wellman said: “We have to run a venue like this strictly. That’s why we have a great reputation. We are phenomenally strict. We are very strict on who we let in. We’re not a volume-led venue, this industry generally isn’t.”

The licence was granted, with minor changes including removing the words “female only” from a condition regarding the locations where “exotic dancing” could take place.

Guildford’s task to avoid issuing a bankruptcy notice requires “urgent” attention and councillors are branding the local council’s problems a “wake up call” – here’s everything we learned from a series of key meetings this week.

Guildford Borough Council is working to address its £300million of borrowing and an £18.3m projected deficit over three years.

Two crucial meetings this week have seen officers set out plans to combat rising costs of borrowing, in a situation compounded by an accounting error which made it look like the council had more in reserves than it did.

In March, the discovery of a £10m accounting error, along with other issues, led to a prediction that at the end of March 2024, the council would have £8.5m in its reserves. This was compared with a reported £32m in February 2023 when the budget for the year was signed off.

Below, the LDRS breaks down some of the key points from a meeting of the council’s corporate governance and standards committee on Tuesday (July 18) and its executive on Thursday (July 20).

Why are reserves so important?

Reserves are effectively a council’s savings, and may be used to balance a council’s budget when money coming in does not cover the money going out.

The drop in the expected reserves at Guildford is a large part of the problem, which could lead to the issuing of a section 114 notice at the borough council, effectively declaring itself bankrupt and stopping all non-essential spending.

Guildford’s executive head of finance told Tuesday’s meeting there is no legally required level of reserves that councils should maintain, but it came down to a “risk-based evaluation” of what he thought the council would need.

Peter Vickers said: “If an Armageddon happened and we got nothing in financially for a month or two, we still have to pay creditors etc. How much money do we really need? So it’s a risk assessment.”

The lead councillor for finance and property said in Tuesday’s meeting the problem for the council was not about cash flow but about servicing its debt, with borrowing costs “ballooning” and the council unable to afford them.

Councillor Richard Lucas (Lib Dem, Ash Vale) said the council was trying to avoid a section 114 notice, which could still come around in October when a new medium term financial strategy will be brought to the council. He said: “We will not deal with this by pretending there is no problem.”

What are the council’s options?

The council will look at all the assets it has available, and work out which could be sold off, with Cllr Lucas saying each asset would be reviewed in terms of how much net income they bring in and how much they could be sold for.

The council’s former leader, Cllr Joss Bigmore (Residents for Guildford and Villages, Merrow), raised concerns in Tuesday’s meeting that officers were painting “too negative a picture” in conflating issues linked to the authority’s council housing and general spending. He told officers: “If that’s because you want to focus our minds, it’s worked. But I don’t think it’s fair. I think this is slightly muddled.”

Cllr Bigmore said the council had strong options for capital assets it could sell off, that would not be done as a “fire sale” but would be about choosing to sell certain investments in favour of others that may be more profitable. He added: “We have a lot of options. It will be a colossal failure of this council if we have to issue a section 114 in October, because we have options.

“We’re not a Woking. There are a lot of things we can do between now and then. So I have every confidence, if we work together we can do it.”

Other plans laid out by officers include “strict controls” on new spending, and the creation of a dedicated financial task force at a cost of £2m.

Mr Vickers confirmed no council housing would be sold off as part of the measures.

Who could be affected?

Councillors raised concerns about the impact on residents if services were to be cut, and particularly in the event of a section 114 notice being issued.

Residents in Croydon have seen a 15 per cent increase in their council tax after the issuing of a section 114 notice there, and neighbouring Woking is currently consulting its residents on which services they would like to see prioritised amid warnings up to 350 staff could be made redundant.

Mr Vickers said on Tuesday the council had to “focus on the vulnerable”.

With a legal obligation to protect the essential services that the council delivers, he said: “It’s not as simple as saying we’re just not going to spend money. We don’t get that option to be frank.”

While he said he did not want to prejudge what may be coming down the line, Councillor Bob Hughes (Conservative, Tillingbourne) said: “This is something that’s going to affect everybody in this borough. People will lose services, there are going to be problems, there could even be, as has happened at some other councils, large increases in council tax.”

What happens next?

Though the increased costs of the Ash road bridge and the 1,500 home Weyside Urban Village were put forward by officers as contributing to the problems, for the bridge at least, the cost of stopping would be the same as to continue on.

Cllr Lucas said the same was true for a key part of the Weyside Urban Village project in relocating a Thames Water sewage works, but that the overall project was likely to see changes down the line.

He said borrowing costs on the project would “balloon” after the point the medium term financial plan is set to look at, but councillors will be looking at the longer-term implications for the plan in due course.

At a meeting on Tuesday July 25, all councillors will debate the officers’ action plan for turning things around.

Cllr George Potter (Lib Dem, Burpham) called the recommendations being made a “wake up call” on the “crisis” the council found itself in. He said: “I’m really pleased with the transparency we’re showing here, with the fact that we are putting as much as we possibly can in the public domain. We’re being very frank and honest about the seriousness of this situation and we are being very clear about the scale of a challenge, and very clear about the scale of what might need to be done in order to deal with it.”

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_{Image: Weyside Urban Village. GBC/JTP design and access statement.}

Schools are spending tens of thousands of pounds trying to support children with additional needs amid delays to assessments from Surrey County Council.

One headteacher said a child waiting more than a year for an education, health and care plan (EHCP) meant the school had spent £40,000 to support him, which impacted on the whole school’s budget.

Delays to the plans, which are legal documents outlining the support required for children with additional needs, are “time consuming, stressful and distressing” according to one parent.

Surrey County Council’s timeliness on completing the plans has dropped in the past 18 months, meaning now just 26 per cent are completed within the legally-required 20 weeks.

Surrey is ranked 128th out of 152 authorities in terms of EHCP timeliness according to Department for Education data.

The starting point, a parent requesting an assessment for a plan, is followed by various assessments of the child, with a shortage of educational psychologists being an important factor in delays to EHCPs.

One parent said she was warned about delays to assessments at the start of her request for an EHCP for her child in October last year. She told a meeting of the county council’s children, families, lifelong learning and culture select committee on Thursday (July 20) parents felt like they were in a “perpetual fight” to get things done.

Having had a stage two complaint upheld, she said a communications protocol that should be in place was not being followed, and that having done a count, she had followed up with what was now her second caseworker around 20 times.

She said: “It’s incredibly time consuming, it’s stressful, it’s distressing. When I get responses from my caseworkers, who I know are incredibly overworked, they say: ‘Thank you for your patience’. “To which I reply to say I do not feel patient anymore. I am impotent to do anything about this because I’ve had a stage two complaint upheld and nothing changes.”

She said despite educating herself, “despite being on top of it, and being organised and keeping a record of every communication and the dates of all of those communications” she couldn’t make things go any more quickly. But she said the impact was mostly on her child who would be starting a mainstream secondary school which may or may not be able to meet his needs because the needs assessment had only just taken place.

The meeting also heard from a school headteacher, Sarah Carrington, of Stoughton Infant School, who said staff felt like there was an expectation to “always do more with less” and which impacted on workloads and wellbeing. She said it was “significantly challenging” in schools currently, probably the most she had seen in 22 years, and that teachers understood there was a rise in EHCP applications.
In Surrey, meeting documents show, there was an increase of 64 per cent in requests for assessment since 2020.

Mrs Carrington said: “It’s my belief that we all need to work together, the educators, the health service, the local authority, to solve these issues we are currently facing, to improve the experience of our children. We’re all aware that it isn’t up to standard and that children are currently being really let down.”

She told of one child who had been waiting for 55 weeks, 25 weeks longer than the legal timescale, for an EHCP. Saying the support the school had put in place for the pupil had cost around £40,000 without funding, and that there would be no back funding for it, she added it therefore impacted on the whole school budget.

Cllr Jonathan Essex (Green, Redhill East) said he’d been to the Earlswood Federation of schools, one of the largest primaries in the county, where governors estimated there was a 50-month funding deficit for EHCP provision, calculated at £32,000.

The cabinet member for education at Surrey County Council, Cllr Clare Curran (Conservative, Bookham and Fetcham West) said the authority was “acutely aware” it was not meeting the needs of children and families in the county. She added: “I’m really sorry about that. I know it is causing distress and worry to a lot of families, and it pains me to say that and I really do apologise to them.”

The county council’s executive director – children, families and learning said the council had been given additional funding from the Department for Education, but outlined that the funding that came through from central government was not allocated for the time that children were waiting for plans to be completed.

She said for several years in Surrey the authority had been overspending on dedicated funding received from government for schools funding, and supplementing government money through council budgets.

Rachael Wardell said: “Councils across the country as well as Surrey, are finding themselves existentially threatened by the debts that are being accrued in order to fund the support.” She told the meeting it wasn’t clear why the various factors playing into delays with EHCPs had created a “perfect storm” in Surrey. She said the process could only be “as fast as the slowest assessment”.

A cabinet meeting to be held on Tuesday (July 25) will make a decision on increasing funding for more educational psychologists to help with the delays, as part of an action plan to bring wait times down.

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A £10million accounting error at cash-strapped Guildford Borough Council was discovered in March but councillors were only told this month.

The error meant it looked like there was more in the council’s reserves, effectively its savings, than there really was, and that “urgent action” was now needed to turn things around.

Officers at the borough council have warned a section 114 notice, the same as has been issued by neighbouring Woking, could be issued this year, but is not immediately needed.

There are plans to cut spending in the short term under a new budget to be agreed by council on Tuesday (July 25), but with a warning the notice may be needed later in the year.

At a meeting of the council’s corporate governance and standards committee on Tuesday (July 18), members were given a clearer timeline of the discovery of the accounting error.

The money, according to Guildford’s joint executive head of finance, a role that is shared with Waverley council, was a Covid grant that had come from central government to be given out by the council.

Peter Vickers told the meeting that the leftover money, which has now been paid back to government, was incorrectly put in the council’s reserves rather than as money to be paid out, affecting the amount of money that seemed to be in the council’s savings.

The error came to light as external auditors looked over the 2020/21 accounts, with Guildford being one of many councils across Surrey and nationwide that has a backlog in its accounts being externally audited.

Mr Vickers said there were “quite a lot of accounting adjustments required” off the back of Grant Thornton’s audit, but said the issue was brought to members “at the earliest, most appropriate time to have that conversation”.

Councillors received an email the day before the statement that was issued on July 12 by Mr Vickers and the council’s chief executive to outline the plans to draw up a new budget and give the council a chance of staying afloat.

Councillor George Potter (Lib Dem, Burpham), said as with anything of such “magnitude” there was an interest in understanding “who knew what and when”. He asked officers when portfolio holders were made aware of the accounting error.

Mr Vickers said it wasn’t “cut and dry” when the error was identified and work needed to be done on identifying what had happened, what controls were in place and the nature of the error. He said: “It wasn’t something we were just about to bring to members and say: ‘Oh, we found an error.’ Everyone’s ears [would] prick up and suddenly we’re all on high alert. We have to do the right diligence to understand what had gone on.”

He said the relevant portfolio holder was told in an “absolutely confidential briefing happened to very few individuals at the time” but that with three years of uncompleted external audits, officers didn’t know “the boundaries of what was going on”.

The borough council’s chief executive told the meeting it was not a case of the council having “lost” £10m that now needed to be found. Tom Horwood said: “This is about an accountancy treatment of a figure that was effectively put in the wrong set of columns. So the money came in, it was spent appropriately, the balance was returned to government. There is no further money to find in that sense from that sum, but it was put into the wrong place from an accountancy perspective, which meant that it looked as if our reserves were higher than they actually are.”

A full council meeting will take place on Tuesday, July 25.

Guildford Borough Council will bring in “strict controls” on new spending and aim to get its finances in order with a special budget to be set this month.

The authority has admitted it may need to consider the issuing of a section 114 notice, effectively declaring itself bankrupt, ahead of a full council meeting in October.

But relying on its reserves should in the meantime avoid having to issue the notice – a move which nearby Woking pursued last month due to a forecasted £2.6billion debt and a £1.2bn deficit.

A dedicated financial task force will be established as Guildford Borough Council admitted it finds itself in a “very difficult financial position”.

The Guildford Lib Dems, which won control of the council in May’s elections, said rising interest rates and accounting issues unearthed by a review of council finances had contributed to the situation.

A special meeting of the authority’s corporate governance and standards committee will outline the plans on Tuesday, July 18. The special budget, which should be brought to full council on July 25, will aim to get the council’s finances in order and will include “strict controls on all new spending, and in-year reductions in spending”.

‘Our residents will always be our highest priority’. The Guildford Lib Dems said the highest priority would be to protect public services. They added: “Above all, we will not shy away from making the tough decisions to make sure residents are protected from cuts to core services. Our residents will always be our highest priority, and we will be honest and realistic about the choices that need to be made to keep the council financially stable.”

The council’s leader, Cllr Julia McShane (Lib Dem, Westborough) said though she knew the report was “a difficult read” she said the council wanted to be open and transparent about the challenges ahead. She said: “We have issued a report today related to our finances. I am aware our residents may find this worrying. I want to reassure you that we are taking this situation very seriously. I take comfort in the fact that officers and councillors are working hard to tackle the situation head on.”

Guildford’s former leader, Cllr Joss Bigmore (Residents for Guildford and Villages, Merrow) said the budget was delivering on what the previous administration had started at the end of the last financial year. He said the council was “nowhere near” the situation of nearby Woking, which in June issued a section 114 notice. But he said a full review of the finances had shown some errors in the accounts. Cllr Bigmore added: “That’s made the situation even more urgent.”

With overall debt of around £300 million, expected to rise further, council documents show the authority can balance its 2023/24 general fund budget, using reserves if necessary, which should avoid the issuing of a section 114 notice in the current financial year.

The former leader, who was in charge for two years as part of an arrangement with the then residents and Lib Dem coalition, said: “Our balance sheet is very solvent. t’s just a matter of managing cash flow, to manage the interest payments. With strong leadership and decisive decision making, it should be no problem.”

He said he “hoped” the current administration could show the leadership and decision making needed. Cllr Bigmore told the LDRS: “I hope they do, for the sake of every resident in Guildford. I think across the chamber, all the group leaders met with the chief executive, the leader and the lead officers for finance and everyone is behind helping.”

He agreed the administration would have to make some “difficult decisions” about services, which could be unpopular with residents. “But they need to make them, otherwise they will be issuing a section 114,” he said.

The Lib Dems pointed to previous Conservative administrations carrying out “high levels of borrowing”, as well as central government issues including rapid rises in interest rates after the budget put out by former Prime Minister Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, and a delay to council account auditing.

The council said spending controls would be brought in, immediately limiting all new spending, a review of major projects and borrowing would be carried out and the council would look at selling council assets.
Plans also include “expanding and strengthening” the council’s finances team and continuing the collaboration with Waverley Borough Council to reduce costs.

The Conservative group leader on the council, Cllr Philip Brooker (Worplesdon) said he had not yet seen the papers for Tuesday’s meeting, but said he thought one area the council could look at tackling was the “significant amount” spent on consultancy fees. Of the budget situation as a whole he said: “It’s extremely concerning at the moment.”

The corporate governance and standards committee will take place at 7pm on Tuesday, July 18, at the council’s Millmead offices.

A review into Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner taking control of the county’s fire and rescue service has been branded “a waste of time” and “unwarranted” by councillors.

The proposals could mean the Surrey Fire and Rescue Service would no longer be under the control of the county council, but councillors questioned the possible move at a time of “considerable change” in the service.

Councillors raised concerns at a meeting of the authority’s communities, environment and highways select committee on Wednesday (July 5) that such a change had previously been ruled out, and that the review was a waste of money.

Lisa Townsend told the LDRS she was responding to central government proposals to reform fire and rescue services, and has commissioned an independent review to see if there would be any benefits of a change.

The Conservative PCC said this was not something she had “dreamt up overnight”, but claimed the county council had made clear they wanted “no active part” in the work to look into the change.

Councillor Denise Turner-Stewart, deputy leader at Surrey County Council and cabinet member for communities and community safety, told the July 5 meeting a previous proposal put forward by former PCC David Munro showed there was “no significant benefit” to a change in governance. She said: ”As far as I’m concerned, nothing has really changed since. There are no direct benefits that could be generated by a potential change. There is no mandate for a potential change.”

She said the service had been through “considerable change” since an inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services in 2018/19 found it required improvement, and was now in a “steady state”.

Cllr Turner-Stewart said it would not be “beneficial or advantageous” to look at further changes for the service, and called the PCC’s review “unwarranted and not legitimate”.

Mrs Townsend said she had written to all MPs and to the county council’s leader outlining the work she planned to undertake and the reasons behind it. She added: “This is government policy which I have been encouraged to consider. So I believe establishing an up-to-date understanding of the picture of fire and rescue governance in Surrey is an entirely prudent and legitimate exercise for me to carry out in the circumstances.

“I want to be clear that at this stage, this is purely a review. Any proposal to take on responsibility for the governance of Surrey Fire and Rescue Service would require the preparation of a full business case. This would be subject to extensive consultation prior to being submitted to the Home Office for any approval.”

Cllr Keith Witham (Conservative, Worplesdon) told the meeting he had already made his views on the proposals known to the PCC. Saying he knew how much hard work had gone into improving the service in the past five years, Cllr Witham said a change would be “an entirely inappropriate, unnecessary distraction at this time”.

He said: “It is a waste of time, a waste of her funds, for she is financing this investigation, and will be a distraction, unnecessarily.”

Mrs Townsend said she had “no desire” to distract from progress made in the service but that a government white paper on future legislation was “imminent”.

She told the LDRS: “[Government] have been clear they want to simplify and strengthen governance for fire services and if that process is to involve Police and Crime Commissioners, this review will ensure I am properly placed to make an informed decision for the Surrey public.”

An Esher monument so “grubby” that people want to clean with toothbrushes is an “enigma” as to who owns and is responsible for it.

The White Lady Milestone road marker, outside the former Cafe Rouge building on the approach to Esher, has been there since 1767. But the Grade II listed milestone is now looking “very grubby” according to one Elmbridge cabinet member, leading to “regular” emails from people who want to clean it up.

Elmbridge Councillor Alex Batchelor told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday (July 5) “it would be great” if anyone could help work out who was supposed to be responsible for the monument. Having had conversations with conservation officers at both Elmbridge Borough Council and Surrey County Council, Cllr Batchelor said as far as he could tell, no one was claiming responsibility for the Portsmouth Road landmark.

The borough council’s leader, Cllr Bruce McDonald (Liberal Democrat, Claygate) described it as an “enigma” for the council to ponder. Cllr Batchelor told the meeting: “It is a listed, National Heritage monument and it’s looking very, very grubby indeed. I constantly get [emails from] regular people who would like to show up with their toothbrushes, give it a good go. The only thing I have to promise them is that’s certainly likely to get them arrested.”

The cabinet were discussing the monument as they made the decision to add the former Cafe Rouge building, previously known as the Orleans Arms, to the council’s list of local heritage assets.

The former public house, dating back to 1856, was originally named after the  Duke of Orleans, King Louis Philippe of France, who lived at nearby Claremont House.

Council documents show it provides evidence for development of Victorian Esher, and point to its prominent location on the historic route between London and Portsmouth.

As a “good example of Regency style building with continental influences” the building was added to the local list, which can be taken into account during planning applications.

Council documents describe assets on the local list as reinforcing “a sense of place and local distinctiveness” and providing a “tangible connection with our past lives, events, and industries”.

A previous planning application for 28 flats on the site was described by residents as “more suitable for the centre of Basingstoke” and “the ugliest residential housing scheme” that one had ever seen.

Surrey has more police officers than ever before despite attempts by the Met to “poach” officers, according to the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner. Lisa Townsend told a meeting of the Police and Crime panel on Thursday (June 29) there were challenges around retention in the force and what was being done to address them.

But she said Surrey Police had beaten a government uplift target by 136 officers. Mrs Townsend described it as a “deliberate move” to over-recruit because officers in Surrey faced issues such as competitive wages and a high cost of living.

With the Met Police “offering quite large sums of money” to try to “poach” Surrey officers, Mrs Townsend pointed to targeted adverts on Surrey trains as one tactic used by the London force.

With 2,325 officers, she said the force was bigger than it had been before. Mrs Townsend spoke more than once in the meeting about the need for police to attend fewer non-critical mental health call outs.
She said “pushing forward” with work to reduce police attending such calls would help with both recruitment and retention in Surrey.

The commissioner said: “People are coming in [to policing] because they want to catch the bad guys, they want to prevent crime, they want to protect the public. Increasingly they are being asked to do what is social work, particularly around mental health and concerns for welfare.”

Tandridge District Councillor Richard Smith, a former police officer, described officer retention as “like lemmings falling of a cliff”. He claimed in most organisations senior management “won’t tell the truth from what’s being said at the bottom end of the company because it makes them look bad”.

Mrs Townsend responded to say she spent a lot of time both with those at the top of the force and out on attachment with officers who she said she hoped were comfortable talking to her about the challenges. She said: “They do like to have a good whinge, and I am more than happy to listen. So I think we do have a pretty good grasp.”

With 395 officers having joined the force since 2019, Cllr Alex Coley, a member of Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, asked for the number of officers who had left in that period.

But Mrs Townsend didn’t give an answer on how many had left the force, saying the “total uplift” was what really mattered and it was “totally normal” to lose officers to retirement and other factors. Her office committed to giving the number to Cllr Coley after the meeting.

Mrs Townsend outlined measures to keep officers including adding to the force’s estates plan to provide more affordable homes, which 85 per cent of officers asked had said was important to them.
Image: Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend at the Surrey Police and Crime Panel budget hearing

_{Image: Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend at the Surrey Police and Crime Panel budget hearing}

An ex-police officer has responded to Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner’s calls for coppers to attend fewer mental health call outs – saying the first murder he attended was initally a non-critical mental health call.

Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Lisa Townsend, recently called for officers to stop attending every mental health call out, saying officers are being taken off the front line. She has called for the “Right Care, Right Person” model to be introduced, following the Metropolitan Police also saying from August they will no longer attend mental health call outs where there is not a threat to life.

Councillor Richard Smith, a Tandridge District Councillor, said he had been a police officer for 30 years and that he was in agreement with Mrs Townsend’s comments. (sic)

Cllr Smith  (Residents’ Alliance, Burstow, Horne & Outwood) spoke at the annual meeting of Surrey County Council’s Police and Crime Panel on Thursday (June 29). He said: “Probably the first murder I went to was a non-critical [mental health] call to a person who then decided to stab the nurse to death with a carving knife out of the kitchen. I feel that’s where we are going to come unstuck when it comes to removing police from mental health calls.”

Mrs Townsend responded that was “absolutely the right place for police to be” and there would always be a role for police to play in such cases. But she said police officers should not be attending where there was a role for other agencies, such as adult social care or the NHS, to follow up.

Earlier in the meeting she had pointed to additional money given to the NHS for mental health support, which police don’t get. But she was clear the police should not get additional money, in her opinion.

She said: “If somebody has broken their leg we would not expect them to be in the back of a police car. “If somebody is having a mental health crisis I do not want them in the back of a police car.”

Mrs Townsend said she’d had “difficult” conversations with NHS representatives about police officers not being able to attend all mental health calls.

She told the meeting the difference was: “I’m not walking into A&E in St Peter’s on a Friday night saying can we borrow a couple of nurses because we have got some burglaries that need solving in Woking?”

She said in February, officers spent 515 hours on incidents relating to mental health which was the highest number of hours ever recorded in a single month by Surrey Police.

_{Image: Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey Lisa Townsend. Surrey Live photographer Darren Pepe.}